James Vowles reveals hardware fault behind Alex Albon's Singapore GP fire

Williams Formula 1 team principal James Vowles has explained the reason for Alex Albon's brake fire during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend.

The Thai driver's weekend at the Marina Bay Street Circuit got off to a tricky start when he suffered a brake fire at the start of the first practice session on Friday.

Vowles has now shared more insight into the cause of the issue and whether it could rear its head again before the end of the 2025 F1 season during the latest episode of The Vowles Verdict.

“So the first thing to point out is Singapore, but also coming up Mexico, are very very high in terms of brake duties. It's very hard to get the cooling through the brakes required, and you saw that in the race. There was certainly Lewis that was in trouble with the brakes as a result of it. But I think most teams were really trying to manage it all the way throughout.

"That wasn't the circumstance in FP1, however. All Alex had done was an out-lap. He'd done the timed lap, and it was during that timed lap that we aborted it. So much earlier on than that. In this particular circumstance, it's been traced to, we have a BBW - brake-by-wire - system. It's been traced to a hardware fault within that.

"The issue actually started around Turn 10 of that lap and we got Alex to back off just a few corners later. But even by that point, the brake discs had so much energy in them and so much temperature we couldn't cool them down. And even when he came into the pitlane, as you saw, we were using fire extinguishers to remove the energy, but not sufficiently to stop the damage being done.

"That isn't related to humidity. It's not even related to brake duty. It could have happened at another track. It is really about another hardware fault that we have to make sure we understand and fix by Austin."

The United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin will take place 17-19 October.